Margin of Error is 7% on Republican voters. Other sub groups 6%. 4% overall. No other internals were released.
What we now have is Iowa where the polls have changed to Carson heavily in the last 3. A trend here clearly exists. Of course, Iowa is highly predictive. Just ask President Huckabee in 2008 and President Santorum in 2012. (Also, heavy ad buys for Carson by his PACs and CFG/COC in favor of Carson or attacking Trump.)
The NYT/CBS poll showing Carson over Trump nationally for the first time, but the internals are not released, so who knows. Is it an outlier? All other national polls show Trump ahead. Must wait to see other polls.
Trump winning in every other state except Oklahoma an Louisiana. If Trump keeps up in those states, then what does the NYT/CBS poll mean?
On the nomination front, this would suggest that Carson would have 3 of 8 states needed for his name to go into nomination. How does he get to eight? Trump needs to be knocked out.
For Trump, if there is a shift, he must stop the bleeding. He does this through heavy advertising buys in the first states, as he has said will begin in November. Then he goes after the opposition on issues.
For Rubio, he has a problem. If he takes out Trump, much of the Trump support will go to Carson or Cruz. It really does not do him much good. Otherwise, he must take out Carson. It is believed that he would pick up quite a bit of the Carson support. So if he takes out Trump, then it becomes more difficult to challenge Carson.
Sounds like for Rubio, he must go after the Carson/Cruz faction, gain some of that support and then hope that Trump drops further.
Now, notice what is really happening over the last month:
1. Media and others have been pushing Carson heavily. Lots of airtime and articles on him, mostly positive.
2. Media has stopped covering Trump rallies, and puts him into negative light. All negative polls are referenced day and night, and positive polls ignored.
3. COC and CFG have aligned to go after Trump.
4. GOPe has been pushing Rubio more.
5. Polls in Iowa and the new NYT/CBS polls are pushed heavily suggesting a trend against Trump. Positive polls in the other states are ignored.
There has obviously been a concerted effort to blunt Trump by the "usual suspects". The Wed night CNBC debate and then the Fox debate two weeks later will show whether there is a true media "hit job" in progress. The polls in between will show whether there is a real trend for Carson against Trump.
Again, I expect that Rubio will be the nominee due to the GOPe and Media efforts. And then Hillary will win in the General Election.